Botched Yahoo redesign months behind schedule
Yahoo's shares rebounded Thursday from five-year lows. The unveiling of a big redesign, the first in two years, revved up traders. But they may not have been as bullish if they knew, as Yahoo insiders do, that the homepage revamp, originally due in October, is months behind schedule and much less ambitious than hoped. Far from revealing a newly energized Yahoo, the delays reveal that the Internet company still suffers from the same problems that have hobbled it for years.Mismanagement and bureaucratic balkanization continue to rule Yahoo. The team developing the new homepage, both the front-end design and the back-end architecture, worked in a vacuum as executives above them kept getting reorged. The mockup of the new design looks great (and yes, the logo will be purple). But the amount of incredibly profitable front-page advertising space was significantly reduced. That's because nobody bothered to discuss the project with ad sales until months of work were done. Even then engineers had to step in to fix problem. Famously unproductive products chief Ash Patel touted third-party widgets, such as a tool that let Yahoo users view upcoming DVDs in their Netflix queue. But Netflix was a consolation prize. Yahoo's product managers have plans to include updates from Facebook and messages from Google's email service, Gmail, on users' homepages. But Facebook and Google have refused to give Yahoo access. What was supposed to be a big news event ended up as a tease for reporters to placate shareholders and stir up developer interest for an event this weekend. Instead of a seismic announcement to undo the publicity damage from the botched Microsoft deal, Yahoo will have to settle for the slightest of tremors. It's not the shakeup Yahoo needs.